Etymologically
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teller

This is the current revision of this entry, as edited by bogdan on 31 October 2026 at 11:51. This address is a permanent link to this version.
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Pronunciation

  • UK: /ˈtɛlə/[1]
  • US: /ˈtɛləɹ/[1]

Etymology

It is formed from English tell + -er, an agent noun from the verb.[2][3][4][5] Dictionary.com and Merriam-Webster date it to Middle English, in the first half of the 14th century.[6][4] The verb tell is from Old English tellan (“to reckon, calculate, count; to consider”),[5] from Proto-Germanic *taljaną,[5][7] whose reflexes include Old Norse telja (“to count; to tell”), Old Frisian tella, Old Saxon tellian and Old High German zellen (“to count”).[7][5][2] The money-counting sense of teller comes from the secondary sense of tell, to count or enumerate, which is the main sense of its cognates in many Germanic languages, such as Dutch tellen.[5][2] The OED compares the spelling tellor with the suffix -or.[2]

Earliest recorded meaning

A person who relates, tells or announces something: 1340, in the Ayenbite of Inwyt.[2] Etymonline dates this sense to the late 14th century, and finds it in a surname from the late 13th century.[5]

Semantic evolution

The sense "one who counts" first belonged to officials who handled money: from 1434 a teller was one of the four officers of the Exchequer who received and paid out the king's money,[2][3][8] the third sense in Johnson's Dictionary (1755), after "one who tells or relates" and "a numberer".[8] Etymonline dates the money-handling sense to the late 15th century and notes that by the 19th century it was used especially of bank clerks.[5] From 1605 the word also named the members of a legislative assembly who count the votes on each side of a division.[2][3][4] A teller could also be a thing that tells or signifies something (from 1574),[2] then from 1868 each of the strokes rung on a church bell at the end of a death knell, a use Merriam-Webster labels dialectal in England.[2][4] Early 19th-century boxing slang used it for a telling, heavy blow.[2][9] The American Heritage Dictionary records the extension to a machine in a bank that carries out transactions when a customer uses a coded card, the automatic teller.[10]

Timeline

  • late 13th century – in a surname.[5]
  • 1340 – a person who relates or announces something, in the Ayenbite of Inwyt.[2]
  • 1434 – an officer of the Exchequer who receives and pays out money.[2]
  • 1574 – a thing that tells or signifies something.[2]
  • 1605 – a person who counts the votes in a legislative assembly.[2]
  • 1814 – boxing slang, a telling blow (obsolete by 1834).[2][9]
  • 1868 – a stroke of a church bell at the end of a death knell.[2]
  • 19th century – especially a bank clerk who pays out and receives money.[5]

Meanings

Noun

  1. A person who works at a bank receiving and paying out money: The teller counted out the notes twice.[10][4][3]
  2. An automated teller machine, a machine that carries out banking transactions for a customer using a coded card.[10]
  3. A person appointed to count the votes in a legislative assembly or a meeting.[10][4][2]
  4. A person who tells or relates something, especially a narrator: a teller of ghost stories.[10][4][2]
  5. (dialect, England) Each of the strokes rung on a church bell at the end of a knell.[4][2]
  6. (historical) One of the four officers of the Exchequer who received and paid out public money.[2][3][8]

Word family

  • tellership
  • storyteller
  • taleteller
  • fortune-teller

References

  1. ^ a b Wiktionary, the free dictionary, https://en.wiktionary.org
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t Oxford English Dictionary Online (accessed March 2026), Oxford: Oxford University Press
  3. ^ a b c d e Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles (2002), 5th ed., ed. William R. Trumble and Angus Stevenson, Oxford: Oxford University Press
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary (2024), online ed., Springfield, Mass.: Merriam-Webster
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i Harper, Douglas. Online Etymology Dictionary, https://www.etymonline.com
  6. ^ Dictionary.com Unabridged (2016), based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, New York: Random House
  7. ^ a b Orel, Vladimir (2003), A Handbook of Germanic Etymology, Leiden / Boston: Brill
  8. ^ a b c Johnson, Samuel (1755), A Dictionary of the English Language, London; 4th ed. 1773; Johnson's Dictionary Online, ed. Beth Rapp Young et al.
  9. ^ a b Green, Jonathon (2010), Green's Dictionary of Slang, London: Chambers; digital ed. 2016–, https://greensdictofslang.com
  10. ^ a b c d e The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (1992), 3rd ed., Boston: Houghton Mifflin